Jamestown's Arcade District among 'Seven to Save'

A New York preservation group says Jamestown's Arcade District is among the organization's list of seven historic places in the state that are endangered.

Jamestown's Arcade Building

Credit Preservation Ready Sites, Buffalo

The Preservation League of New York State on Tuesday released its "Seven to Save" designees for 2018-2019.

Jamestown's Arcade District takes its name from the Arcade Building on Main Street -- one of Jamestown’s most historic and fascinating buildings -- which has been at the center of discussion on downtown’s renaissance. Despite decades of vacancy and poor maintenance, many of the Romanesque Revival building’s historic elements remain intact, including its interior atrium.

In June 2017, the Arcade sustained additional damage when a neighboring building caught fire. The 1890-built landmark is one of more than 100 buildings in a variety of architectural styles in the city's downtown Historic District.

Also on the preservation group's list are the late-18th-century site of the first U.S. settlement of the Shaker Christian sect just north of Albany, an Albany neighborhood settled by Irish and German immigrants in the mid-19th century; a crumbling 19th-century Erie Canal aqueduct over Schoharie Creek, late-19th-century barns developed in Monroe and Livingston counties; a railroad roundhouse in Ontario County; and opera houses that were built in many communities across the state.

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